AG nominee Bondi says no 'enemies list,' but won't rule out probes of Trump foes
Former Florida AG Pam Bondi testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing for the position of U.S. attorney general. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Pam Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, sought Wednesday to assure skeptical Democrats that she would not use the Justice Department to target the president-elect’s political enemies.
But she repeatedly sidestepped questions during her confirmation hearing about his threats to prosecute specific adversaries—including former special counsel Jack Smith and former congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming)—and resisted pressure to explicitly state she was willing to defy the White House if it sought to interfere with investigations.
“There will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice,” Bondi told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I will not politicize that office. I will not target people simply because of their political affiliation.”
She vowed instead to eradicate what she called “the partisanship, the weaponization” of the department under Attorney General Merrick Garland—a characterization frequently wielded by Trump and his Republican allies, even as Garland and his top deputies have kept their distance from the Biden White House and avoided politically oriented public statements.
“My overriding objective will be to return the Department of Justice to its core mission of keeping Americans safe and vigorously prosecuting criminals,” Bondi said.
Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and the first woman to hold that job, was one of a half-dozen Trump nominees to face Senate confirmation hearings Wednesday.
Sen. Marco Rubio, a fellow Floridian and the president-elect’s pick for secretary of state, received an unusually friendly welcome at his hearing before the Foreign Relations Committee, with colleagues from both parties praising his qualifications for that job.
Sean P. Duffy, Trump’s choice for transportation secretary, and John Ratcliffe, picked for CIA director, receive praise at their hearings. Other selections who appeared before different Senate committees Wednesday were Chris Wright, Trump’s choice for energy secretary, and Russell Vought, the president-elect’s pick to head the Office of Management and Budget.
And while Bondi’s more than five-hour grilling at times turned testy, it was less contentious than what had been expected had Trump’s first pick for attorney general reached the confirmation stage. Former congressman Matt Gaetz, another Florida Republican, withdrew from consideration last year amid allegations of sexual impropriety, a House ethics investigation and concerns he could not secure the votes needed to be confirmed.
Bondi, a more conventional choice for the role of attorney general given her past law enforcement experience, remained largely composed as she sought to portray herself as an independent, crime-focused prosecutor.
Toward the end of the hearing, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California), with whom Bondi had sparred over election denialism, acknowledged that there was little doubt she would become the nation’s next attorney general.
“I know how to count,” Padilla told her. “I know how to read tea leaves. It seems to me you’re very, very, very, very likely to be confirmed.”
There was far more skepticism expressed at the hearing about a different Trump selection: Kash Patel, the president-elect’s pick to lead the FBI.
Patel has echoed Trump’s calls for retribution against their perceived foes, and his selection has set off alarms among some former officials and many lawmakers. Again and again on Wednesday, Bondi was asked about Patel and whether she—as attorney general—would ensure that he did not become a personal enforcer for Trump as head of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.
“I have known Kash, and I believe that Kash is the right person at this time for this job,” Bondi said. She emphasized the chain of command, noting that the FBI is part of the Justice Department, and insisted she would make sure “that all laws are followed, and so will he.”
Bondi, who served as Florida’s top prosecutor from 2011 until 2019, represented Trump during his first impeachment and has since emerged as one of his most reliable surrogates on cable TV.
Democrats repeatedly seized on a 2023 interview she did on Fox News, in which she assailed efforts to prosecute Trump and vowed that during the next Republican administration, “the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated.”
Trump fired his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who had enraged him by recusing himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election. William P. Barr, who succeeded Sessions, also clashed with Trump over several issues, including Barr’s public comments disputing Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud in 2020.
Heading into his second administration, Trump has vowed to be even more involved in Justice Department decisions, calling for investigations into the prosecutors and lawmakers who probed his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and those involved in criminal cases related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of government efforts to retrieve them, and his falsification of business records in connection with a hush money payment in 2016.
Sen. Dick Durbin (Illinois), the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, cited those comments in demanding a show of independence from Bondi.
“I need to know that you would tell the president ‘No’ if you’re asked to do something that’s wrong, illegal or unconstitutional,” he said.
Bondi rejected the premise of a similar question from Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) on how she would react if the White House were to pressure her to drop an investigation that was supported by career Justice Department staffers.
“Senator,” Bondi responded, “if I thought that would happen, I would not be sitting here today. That will not happen.”
Bondi was more willing to engage with Republican anxieties over what Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s chairman, described as “rot infecting the Department of Justice.”
“They targeted Donald Trump,” Bondi said. “They went after him—starting back in 2016, they targeted his campaign. They have launched countless investigations against him.”
But she repeatedly avoided providing explicit answers to some questions, including whether she would acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. “Joe Biden is the president of the United States,” she responded.
Bondi similarly refused to give a firm answer on whether she would advise Trump to pardon those convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including people who carried out violent assaults on police officers. She said she condemned “any violence” against law enforcement officials but added that she had not reviewed the files from those cases and would need to “look at each case and advise on a case-by-case basis.”
Later in the hearing, when clemency came up again, Bondi used the question to shift gears and criticize Biden for his move last month to commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, requiring them instead to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Opponents of the death penalty had urged Biden to commute all 40 sentences, fearing that the incoming Trump administration would carry out federal executions that were halted because of a moratorium during Biden’s term. During Trump’s first stint in the White House, the Justice Department restarted federal executions and carried out 13 lethal injections before Biden took office.
“The pardons, the commutations that Joe Biden just made were abhorrent to me, absolutely abhorrent, taking people off death row,” Bondi said.
One of her loudest critics during the proceeding—Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California)—used part of his time to look ahead to the incoming administration, telling Bondi that there may come a time when her loyalty to Trump clashes with her duties leading the Justice Department.
“What you do in that moment will define your attorney generalship,” he said.
